Some tricks to speed up an old computer:

dash
Install dash. Make /bin/sh a simlink to /bin/dash. Normally it's linked to bash, which is slower. /bin/sh is the shell used to start up and shutdown the computer. Using dash will make it faster.
You can also make dash your user shell with chsh. That will save some more ram, but I advice you then to use bash in [xae]term/rxvt. For example: "aterm -e bash". Dash is no good interactive shell.

/etc/inittab
Change the number of virtual consoles from 6 to 2. That is, if you don't need it. Many people never use more then 2.

Here you can also change CTRL+ALT+DELETE behaviour to shut the pc down instead of rebooting (or whatever).

Yesterday, I installed Sid with Ext 3, Grub, and the rest of my usual apps. Everything fine and dandy, my old box is humming. Except, the connection to the repositores of the university of Chicago, sometimes
takes a few seconds to start. No problem, is not like i have to wait a long time. Now, in an hour i have to leave the house with my wife and kids to a family reunion, and my wife likes to be on time. No problem.

While looking for something in the APT-HOWTO, i ran into this humdinger in Section 2.3:

Deciding which mirror is the best to include in the sources.list file: netselect, netselect-apt
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap...basico.en.html

Man, right up my alley, i read it, nothing fancy, should be simple, besides, i got 45 minutes to kill. The Debian repositories in Colombia and Costa Rica are not too fast either. So i installed 'netselect' trying to keep it simple, just had to manually replace my
sources.list with the repositories netselect was going to give me. I did the netselect bit, without first backing the original sources.list. I didn't realize this at the time. Netselect checks 300+ repositories (5 minutes), tells me who is the winner, i replace
the sources.list, save/exit, do an apt-get update and nothing works.
Now what? Clock is ticking, my wife knows these things can take hours if not days, but i promised this wasn't hapenning today, not today.

Netselect is out, I'm too dense to replace my own sources.list.

I read the 2.3 section again twice, decide to install 'netselect-apt', after that, as root, i give it the command:

neselect-apt unstable

it starts again, i go and change clothes, wife is happy. I come back to an error: "it can't check the repositories because you are probably behind a firewall". How come it didn't happen before with netselect? And WHY is this hapenning to ME? Why is it not hapenning to some geek like Dead Parrot, who is probably having a cold Foster and playing with his koala bear.

I'm running outta time, i disinstall Firehol, do the netselect-apt thing again, check my sources.list, nothing. Go back to the instructions:

"Remember: the sources.list file is generated under the current directory, and must be moved to the /etc/apt directory."

# ls -l sources.list
sources.list (aha, so it exists)

So i move it to the /etc/apt file:

# mv sources.list /etc/apt

i go and check the sources.list, there it is:

# the main Debian packages.
deb http://ftp3.nrc.ca/debian/ unstable main contrib
deb-src http://ftp3.nrc.ca/debian/ unstable main contrib

# the non-US Debian packages.
deb http://mirror.peer1.net/debian-non-US/ unstable/non-US main contrib
deb-src http://mirror.peer1.net/debian-non-US/ unstable/non-US main contrib

Both of them in Canada.

Five minutes to go, i do a quick:

# apt-get update && apt-get -y dist-upgrade

it flies, no errors, wheeow! saved by the bell. I reinstalled Firehol and configured it. I shutdown the box and got outta Dodge.

At the party, my rat-bastard brother-in-law who loves XP, asked sardonically "how is Linux in that teapot of yours?" I told it was fine, never gave me any problem, worms, adware, no hackers, good firewall, just fine, runs like a Deere.

He told me one of these days he was going to try it, it couldn't be that hard, besides he got me. Yeah, right!

Now you know how easy it is to change repositories in your sources.list.

i use sarge 2.6.7-1smp and i got i915 board with on-board sound intel-azx.
i updated alsa to alsa 1.0.8.then i tried to configure alsa by alsaconf.but alsaconf didn't detect this card "azx".i tried everything to get sound.but no escape.plsssssssssss help.but when sarge shutdowns it beeps and shows amixer fails.i can't read shutdown messages as it is very fastly goes off.
also my Fedora 3 got sound with alsa 1.0.8.
the lsmod command shows these:
Module Size Used by
snd_mixer_oss 20384 0
snd 59108 1 snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 10880 1 snd
msr 4032 0
cpuid 3392 0
ipv6 272160 10
autofs4 21444 2
thermal 12880 0
fan 4204 0
button 6520 0
processor 17888 1 thermal
ac 5036 0
battery 9612 0
piix 13824 1
ehci_hcd 32868 0
shpchp 103372 0
pciehp 100428 0
pci_hotplug 35708 2 shpchp,pciehp
parport_pc 35840 0
parport 43272 1 parport_pc
floppy 62452 0
tsdev 7552 0
pcspkr 3852 0
mousedev 10704 3
psmouse 20616 0
evdev 9792 0
uhci_hcd 33776 0
usbcore 117440 4 ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
e100 34176 0
mii 5344 1 e100
nls_cp437 5920 5
dm_mod 46016 0
capability 4744 0
commoncap 7520 1 capability
ide_generic 1632 0
ide_cd 43876 0
ide_core 145200 3 piix,ide_generic,ide_cd
cdrom 40768 1 ide_cd
genrtc 10648 0
ntfs 94380 1
vfat 15456 2
fat 47936 1 vfat
isofs 36124 0
ext2 75016 0
ext3 129672 2
jbd 70232 1 ext3
mbcache 10340 2 ext2,ext3
sd_mod 22176 7
ata_piix 8228 6
libata 42084 1 ata_piix
scsi_mod 127492 2 sd_mod,libata
unix 31056 495
font 8544 0
vesafb 6880 0
cfbcopyarea 4064 1 vesafb
cfbimgblt 3264 1 vesafb
cfbfillrect 4000 1 vesafb
pls help me 'am anxsly waiting for reply.

Thank you for the advice.

Why would you say this? In the first place, I was trying to install woody, in the second place, i read all this stuff you've listed here, and none of the advice worked.

The "very verbose" walk through you mention above is nothing more than a rehash of what debian tells you, or asks you, when you are installing the operating system. I didn't see any information pertaining to my problem, at all, since I don't use a usb mouse.

The second and third links are related, and the fellow that wrote them used the style of a 12 year old girl writing a fan letter to her latest heart-throb. It certainly was an interesting read, but something less than informative. His system worked taking the defaults or making obvious changes, so there is nothing really listed for the person whose system does not respond to the defaluts.

The last link discusses how to configure x, without any information not available from debconf. I'm not even sure what little information is in the paragraph is accurate, as debconf changed my xfree86-4 file after I had manually changed it. But, in any case, there is no discussion in any of these place regarding what course of action should be taken when the configuration fails.

In general, while your article has the purported purpose of helping someone, it actually seems as if you wrote it, instead, to brag, and, judging from your sources, and your comments, the only reason you have to brag is that the systems you have installed debian on worked smoothly with the defaults.

And, oh yeah, it's spelled "laziness", so if I might paraphrase your comment:

The word seems to be misspelled either for lack of knowledge or laziness. Yes, some people do not want to read, they want easy, fast answers that only solve their problems momentarily, and the next day they are back making the same silly spelling errors.

You need to read more. Who knows, you might actually learn something!

This operating system may be overpriced.

Thank you for the advice.

Why would you say this? In the first place, I was trying to install woody, in the second place, i read all this stuff you've listed here, and none of the advice worked.

The "very verbose" walk through you mention above is nothing more than a rehash of what debian tells you, or asks you, when you are installing the operating system. I didn't see any information pertaining to my problem, at all, since I don't use a usb mouse.

The second and third links are related, and the fellow that wrote them used the style of a 12 year old girl writing a fan letter to her latest heart-throb. It certainly was an interesting read, but something less than informative. His system worked taking the defaults or making obvious changes, so there is nothing really listed for the person whose system does not respond to the defaluts.

The last link discusses how to configure x, without any information not available from debconf. I'm not even sure what little information is in the paragraph is accurate, as debconf changed my xfree86-4 file after I had manually changed it. But, in any case, there is no discussion in any of these sources, or the couple of dozen other sites I visited, regarding what course of action should be taken when the configuration fails.

In general, while your article has the purported purpose of helping someone, it actually seems as if you wrote it, instead, to brag, and, judging from your sources, and your comments, the only reason you have to brag is that the systems you have installed debian on worked smoothly with the defaults.

And, oh yeah, it's spelled "laziness", so if I might paraphrase your comment:

The word seems to be misspelled either for lack of knowledge or laziness. Yes, some people do not want to read, they want easy, fast answers that only solve their problems momentarily, and the next day they are back making the same silly spelling errors.

You need to read more. Who knows, you might actually learn something!

This operating system may be overpriced.

cdstrand,
These guys who are putting together these howtos are volunteers. They don't owe you anything. If you are having problems getting your system working, read what they have to say. If it's not applicable, get your info somewhere else. Don't make a user account on LQ and post your first 2 identical messages bashing the work that somebody did to try to make it easier for you. I can think of another OS 'community' that may be more appropriate for you.

Just a post to say that my page about debian http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/linux/debian.html
has reached a quite acceptable and useful level. I don't post it here on the forum because I still change and make additions to it from time to time.
Have a look if you're interested. I hope it's of some use!

grtz

nice page indeed!

Anythng regarding usefull information is never a waste of server space. Keep up the good work!

From a posting by Dead Parrot:

"I've been constantly surprised that no-one has written a really GOOD tutorial about using aptitude, because it's a very useful program and I guess many people use it. Personally, I just checked the help screen often and moved the highlighted area -- and slowly it just somehow started to make sense. I guess most people just learn it by using it. Anyway, here's some sort of attempt to explain aptitude and its usage:"

http://doc2.inf.elte.hu/doc/aptitude/html/en/

__________________


Thanks DP!

Hi there, I'm brand new to anything Linux. I have just installed Sarge and I'd
like the computer to boot into KDE instead of the, apparently default, Gnome.

KDE supports Thai keyboard layout that I need to use. Any suggestion and helps
is greatly appreciated.

Forgive me for posting a silly request. I fumbled around and managed to
enable Thai keyboard layout with Gnome.

I have another request though. I'm running Sarge with 2.6 kernel and the
GUI only limit me to 800 by 600 resolution, my graphic card is ATI Radeon
9800 pro - 128mb RAM, how can I increase the maximum resolution ?

"I have another request though. I'm running Sarge with 2.6 kernel and the
GUI only limit me to 800 by 600 resolution, my graphic card is ATI Radeon
9800 pro - 128mb RAM, how can I increase the maximum resolution?"

junkman4547: this type of questions is better posted as a new one in the forum, more people will see it and the answer will be posted more rapidly. The object of this sticky is to be a sort of manual. I understand you're a noobie, look in the database for the Debian forum using the 'Search' option. It would be helpful if you read the sticky starting with page 1 and the subsequent postings.

regards,

Thank you for pointing me to the right direction Macondo. I apologize for my inappropriate question on this thread.

Wanted to say thanks to this bloke,

You have helped me so much.
I've had a few queries,
but Macondo and others on the LQ have done me right,
without having to ask too much at all,
thanks again...

Cheers
Shag.

aptitude user's manual
http://people.debian.org/~dburrows/aptitude-doc/en/ Oops same site just different links.